Colors are the Cure
by iHedge
Summary: Nixon finds himself looking at the only color he's seen in months. Rating for Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles.. Wait. Wrong category.. No slash, no smut, no language. Post-Bastogne OC.
1. Light and Easy

**1. Light and Easy**

Pariswas crowded during the lunch hour. Crowded with sunlight, colors flashed by bags and hats and bread, and the clicking sound of heels against stool legs. Flushed and alive, filled to overflowing with flowered girls and grinning gentlemen.

How the girl loved it! How she reveled in life, in being alive on this, the first glorious day of spring! How her eyes skipped, tripped, over the world, always thirsting for more, more, never quenching that thirst. How oblivious to darkness, anything dark, she seemed to be.

And how he, sitting at a table across the road, could not stop his eyes from drinking. Drinking, drinking, drinking, until the tips of his fingers fluttered imperceptibly, losing their control, the nerves numb and reeling.

Her hair was easy, light. Easily teased by the light wind. Easy-going with the light blue of her dress. Easy and light, light and easy. His fingers twitched lightly around the handle of a cup, itching to twirl around the strands of her hair. It would be so, so easy. A light word, an easy smile, and she would be swept away…

The forgotten cup lay shattered on the ground, solemnly watching as the soldier led the girl away, his fingers fluttering against her shoulder and lightly tangling in her windy hair.

- - - - - - - - - -

_There it is!_

_This will eventually turn into a Nixon OC. _

_Constructive criticism and reviews are welcome._

_Oh! And if anyone knows of a good website for anything Band of Brothers related (timelines, etc.) links are appreciated. Also anything on France during WW2 and the underground and all that. _


	2. Musing

**2. Musing**

The dawning of the next day saw two cars driving away from each other, the yellow girl in one, the dark soldier in the other. The only sign they'd ever known each other was a broken cup on the city street, the soldier's signature in a hotel logbook, and a disheveled hotel room.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cursing, Nixon threw a glare at the sagging tire of his government-issue deathtrap. It had blown two miles away from whatever city Easy had headquartered in since his mandatory weekend leave. He didn't care; didn't want to remember any more German names.

The screws finally fell into place after leaving him a few souvenir pinches and scrapes, and Nixon pulled into a street bustling with the 506th.

It looked nothing like what he'd just left. The little Belgian city was bright. Healthy. Full of yellow hair and blue dresses and soft shoulders. Wait. He jerked his head. Now was not the time to think about that. It didn't belong here, among the dirt and grime of unwashed paratroopers—although it looked like they were finally showering.

Nixon sighed. He needed a shower himself. Quite honestly, he didn't know why the girl hadn't turned up her nose at the smell that must have been emanating from his body, but she didn't. He sighed again, smacking the steering wheel, frustrated. It was only one night! He was never going to see her again.

In the afterglow of last night, she'd told him in whispers that she was passing through, headed back home after a little vacation near the Mediterranean. He'd wondered why anyone would be taking vacations in the middle of a war, but he hadn't cared enough to ask her. It was just one night.

_And now it's just one more day,_ he thought. _Just one more day of pointless recon missions and a dwindling stream of whiskey._ His mouth stretched into a crooked line. Dick had demanded that he stay away for at least half a week. His look had been hopeful; hopeful that maybe a few days away would ease the tight grip his whiskey was gaining.

Nixon grinned. One night he'd been gone. The look on his friend's face would be worth the discarded days of leave.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Leah smiled at the morning sun, glad to be the recipient of its rays, especially after the night she'd spent in the dark arms of the officer. Her smile fell just a little. Her fiancée would grow red if he found out—but no one knew except for herself and the soldier, and he was gone back to the battle.

How different the two men were! One dark, the other light. Brown eyes, blue eyes.

"If I were honest with myself, I don't know which one I prefer," she mused. Grimacing, she determined to forget the night. One mistake needn't dictate her future. Besides, today she was going home!

After months spent with some cousins who were tied in heavily with the French Forces of the Interior, Leah was looking forward to a few weeks of relative relaxation. Espionage was not an important issue in her home town.

Oh, but she was tired. Tired of looking over her shoulder, tired of her weakness regarding soldierly advances, and tired of the secrecy such things demanded. Her cousins had seen her walls eroding and sent her back home. She had no complaints.

Leah missed her fiancée always looking over her shoulder for her. She missed him at her elbow, warding away the advances. Most of all, she missed the light and color of his eyes. Although not nearly as brooding or mysterious as last night's soldier's, they were loving and tender and everything the soldier's eyes were not.

_So there_, she grinned. Checking her watch, she looked around for a glimpse of her town.

Instead of an idyllic Belgian village, however, angry smoke was billowing from the skyline.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_This chapter is dedicated to __ber1719__. Check out her story _Love Melts His Heart_! _

_If it wasn't for her, this chapter (however puny and filler-ish it may be) would probably not have been written for months upon months. So a Huge Thanks to her and a Truckload of Gummi Bears. :)_

_I will do my desperate best to post the next chapter before the end of June, but with gathering all of my schoolwork for the past year for evaluation, fundraising, and camp, I am not sure when I'll find the time (or motivation). But I will do my best. _


	3. Smoking Kills

**3. Smoking Kills**

Smoke—huge, billowing clouds of angry black smoke.

Leah's mouth moved, panic obvious in her eyes, and her body reacted, jolting the car forward and speeding by the last mile of damp forest. As she neared her hometown, scenarios of singed and dying family members flew through her mind.

The vehicle swept past the blackened buildings, past the solemn neighbors with their procession of corpses, and past the trampled flowers and foliage, finally gripping the gravel in front of her parent's home.

"God—God, please!" she choked, falling onto the ash-covered stones; "Please—"

Stumbling to the smoking door, Leah grasped the doorknob, jerking her hand back as the metal seared through one layer of skin. Cursing, she staggered toward the backyard, fear for her family adrenalizing the burned nerve endings into numbness.

The fire bellowed obscenities at the girl, taunting and terrifying her, filling her ears with imagined shrieks. Ash and dust drifted up from her plodding feet, outlining sweat-and-tear marks.

So deep was her anguish and so fierce the fire's roar that Leah hadn't heard the warning shouts of her neighbors, calling out for the tear-blinded child to stay away from the shuddering building.

Oblivious to any danger but the potential one the fire posed for her trapped family, Leah sprinted into the open, smoking back door, disappearing in the haze.

The villagers groaned and wailed as the back of the house collapsed from within, dust and cinders forming a cloud above the ruins. A man stood in front of the crowd, his face contorting, his eyes full of blue-hued triumph as they watched the cinder cloud drift into town, spreading the remnants of whatever remained of Leah and her family.

"_Es ist vollbracht_," he murmured.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_YES. Now the action (however dialogue-less and clichéd it may be) has begun. _

_For handy German to English translations, go to translation dot Babylon dot com._

_There will be Nixon in the next chapter, I promise you this. The reason this is a Leah-Chapter is because I am not confident enough in my details to know specifically what Nixon was supposed to be doing in that town (Hagenau?) in Ep. 8. Expect the next chapter by the beginning/middle of July (as I am trying to post at least once a month now). _

_You look under-nourished._

_Here. _

_Have a cookie._

_P.S. That was a bribe to leave reviews like, "So small, but SO GOOD!" :D_


End file.
